Call it a sign of the times that when consumer card advocate Bill Hardekopf of LowCards.com praised two cards' debit rewards programs, they were not cards issued by financial institutions.

In fact, they really weren't debit cards at all, in the sense of cards that used a credit or EFT processing system to validate the transactions. Instead they were the sorts of cards that debited cardholders checking accounts directly through an ACH transaction.

The two cards were distributed by the Target retail chain and the Shell oil company. Each card offers consumers discounts on purchases they make from the retailers, often more generous rewards than those that used to be offered by financial institutions on their debit cards.